-
Why I Don’t Compliment People on Their Weight Loss
In the Fall of 2017, I started getting sick. It would take months and months of tests and procedures to discover that I had cancer. In the meantime, between getting sick and diagnosis, I began losing weight. People complimented me on how good I looked, and asked me what I’d done to drop the pounds. But I wasn’t excited about the weight loss. Instead, I was terrified. It can be scary to lose weight when you’re not trying. What if I couldn’t stop? Would I eventually waste away to nothing? When I looked in the mirror, my thinner self was a reminder of how weak I was. I know that…
-
Christmas Too Much This Year? Give Advent A Try.
Despite what the movies, and commercials, and stories tell us, Christmastime can actually be really difficult. Some of us have lost loved ones, and the season only serves to further remind us of their absence. Some of us are struggling in some way that makes getting into the “Christmas Spirit” really difficult. Some of us have been ill at Christmastime, and the calls for joy and merriness seem out of place with the deep pain we’re experiencing. I didn’t really start celebrating Advent until coming to seminary. I grew up watching the candles on a wreath being lit each week in church leading up to Christmas Day, but it…
-
Strength for Today
We sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in Chapel today. And like never before, I’ve needed to sing the line “Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow” in hopes that I will actually come to believe it. On the outside my body often looks so healthy. But on the inside, my body still deals with neuropathy, and pain, and what feels like insurmountable weakness and fatigue. “How am I going to make it through the semester?” I wonder. In fact, “How am I going to make it though today?” Just now I was thinking about the Israelites in the wilderness, and how God offered them fresh manna each day. They…
-
Doing Good by Shopping Well (a List of Fair Trade Companies)
The world is a complicated place, and sometimes it’s difficult to know how to make a difference without causing any further harm. I’ve been pondering this lately, as I so badly want to do my part to shine a light, but don’t want to stomp out anyone else’s light in the process, or make anyone think I’m more important than I actually am. I was reminded that one way to do good without accidentally doing harm is to be conscious of where we spend our money. When we spend each dollar, it’s like we’re voting on the kind of businesses we want to see and the kind of world we…
-
To the Woman Who’s Life Has Not Gone as Planned
On the table in the waiting room of the women’s clinic are gifts for new or pregnant moms labeled “Welcome to the Sisterhood of Motherhood.” The bulletin board in the exam room is covered in photos of babies that I’m assuming this doctor helped bring into the world. This is all ironic since I am here to ask the doctor, among other things, if she thinks my body will be able to bear children one day, or if the chemo has damaged it beyond repair. I rotate my head toward the opposite wall so I that I don’t have to stare at the baby pictures anymore. But the artwork is…
-
Breathe Into These Dry Bones
(Inspired by Ezekiel 37) There are times I’m forced to see the barrenness inside of me. All the things that will never be, things too broken for science to fix, plans that can no longer exist. In the valley of dry bones and dried up dreams hope long forgotten life left long ago. Will it return? Only You know. The name of this place is scarcity. When I emerge from it who will I be? Abundance or just an empty shell? Together or broken, I cannot tell. I feel as cracked and dried up as the bones in this place. Hopes dead so long they’ve been bleached by the sun.…
-
What Depression Feels Like (For Me)
It is as if my mind is a computer program, but a virus has entered in and corrupted the code. Every now and then the original code comes to the surface, and the program seems to run normally. For example, when I felt proud of a friend who performed at an event at my school, I recognized that emotion as part of the original code. But on a different occasion, the corrupted code was running. I was with some friends, doing an activity I know that I love, and yet I was not enjoying myself at all. In fact I kept having to talk myself into staying just a few…
-
Can You Hold My Pain?
Some people are afraid to interact with people who are in pain because they feel like they don’t know what to say or do. But often people do not need to say or do anything. They just need to be willing to listen. I am forever grateful to those who have opened up their hands, arms, and homes to me, creating spaces where all of me is welcome, including my pain. I am forever grateful to those who have simply listened, without judgement, without feeling the need to fix the situation, and without commenting anything more than perhaps agreeing that what I am going through is in fact very difficult.…
-
Surviving
I was thinking the other day about how in most media portrayals of someone with cancer, the person dies in the end. It seems there are not nearly as many portrayals of what happens when a person lives. And I think it’s important to know that cancer isn’t over when the treatment ends. Now please hear me: Life, survivorship, is something that not everyone gets to experience. This is not an attempt at complaint or a plea for pity. Rather, I would like to share my experience of what it is like to be a survivor. The “fighting” doesn’t end once the chemotherapy or radiation is over. When I finished…
-
Give Me Strength to do the Dishes
Today I found myself praying, “Lord, thank You for the strength to do the dishes.” It had already been a long day, and I had maybe only been awake for five hours. But by the time I got home after my morning activities, I was already spent. So being able to both cook lunch and clean up felt like more than I could even hope for, although I did have to push myself, saying “one more dish, you can do this, one more dish,” as though I was trying to make it through mile 26 of a marathon. As someone who likes to do ALL THE THINGS, and can easily…
